In a recent Beeb Watch podcast, veteran BBC presenter Jonathan Dimbleby criticised Britain’s Jewish communal leaders for being insufficiently critical of the Israeli government. Dimbleby claimed that failing to do so ‘exacerbated’ antisemitism because it allowed antisemites to claim that Jews cared little for the Palestinians.
He sought to lecture a British Jewish audience, at a Holocaust event to commemorate the liberation of Belsen no less, about the distinction they appear to have missed between ‘antisemitism’, which he labelled a ‘disgusting prejudice’, and ‘anti-Netanyahu-ism’.
Underlying this claim is a series of frankly misguided assumptions about the Jewish community: that Jewish leaders ought to be more critical of the Netanyahu government, that they consider opposition to Netanyahu to be antisemitic and that antisemitism can be lessened by demonstrating criticism of Israel.
If Anglo-Jewish leaders have not been sufficiently critical of the Israeli government, it is perhaps because they recognise that the country has faced an existential, multi front war, led by Iran, for the last 18 months.
They realise that defeating Hamas is a priority and that much of the western media has swallowed a series of lies about the war: that Israel has committed genocide, that no aid has been allowed into Gaza, that Israel has indiscriminately bombed the enclave, and so on. Yet it is quite consistent with supporting just war aims to be critical of Israeli ministers, as communal leaders have been.
The second related assumption, that Jews may consider opposition to Netanyahu to be antisemitic, fuels something that academic David Hirsh has called ‘the Livingstone formulation’.
Jeremy Havardi
Jews have been accused, both by Ken Livingstone and others on the left, of weaponising antisemitism in order to silence criticism of the Israeli government. It is an insidious charge because it suggests that Jews are so desperate to censor critics of Israel that they will resort to falsely accusing others of racism.
Dimbleby may have had this in mind when he said: ‘We are frightened of speaking because we are frightened of being charged with that heinous offence of antisemitism.’ Naturally, the idea that media outlets cower in silence about Israel because of a few pesky Jews is frankly absurd.
The reality is that Jews who complain about the antisemitic demonisation of Israel are silenced and gaslighted as ‘agents of Netanyahu’, precisely to give impunity to those who do use antisemitism to condemn the Jewish state. Thus, it is antisemites who weaponise antisemitism, not Jews.
More striking is Dimbleby’s claim that if only British Jewish leaders spoke out to condemn Israel, it would reduce the ferocity of Jew hate.
Let us for a moment ignore the vast panoply of antisemitic acts that make no reference to Israel: physical assaults on individuals, Holocaust denial, charges of dual loyalty, images of Jews with hook noses and the exclusion of Jewish voices from the world of art and culture.
If we focus on Israel-related antisemitism, what we usually find is a level of hatred so unhinged and ferocious that it does not submit to polite discussion or rational argument. The frenzied hate marches on British streets are predicated on seeing Israel as a demonic state, a pariah nation satiated only by spilling innocent blood, an illegitimate entity so malign and corrupt that any ‘resistance’ to it is sacralised.
Today’s anti-Israel movement will not be appeased by anything less than a wholesale repudiation of Zionism, an impossible demand for almost all Jews. To suggest that Jewish leaders are to blame for igniting this torrent of prejudice is pure victim blaming.
Worst of all, Dimbleby wanted to express these views at an event to mark the anniversary of Belsen’s liberation. To try and score cheap political points at an event to mark the mass murder of Jews is both sordid and dishonest.
Dimbleby would do well to remember that the Holocaust is, in essence, about the enduring power and lethality of antisemitism, something that is called the world’s ‘oldest hatred’ for a good reason.
- Jeremy Havardi is a freelance journalist and author
